Pip stepped closer, into the yellow glow of the lamplight, trying to think over the screeching in her head. She screwed her eyes and studied the face before her.
Now that she was closer, she could see the obvious differences, the slightly different slope to her plump lips, the downturn to her eyes where they should flick up, the swell of her cheekbones lower than they should be. Changes that time couldn’t make to a face.
Pip had looked at the photographs so many times these past months, she knew every line and groove of Andie Bell’s face.
This wasn’t her.
Pip felt detached from the world, floating away, empty of all sense.
“You’re not Andie,” she said quietly, just as the police officer climbed up the ladder behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
The wind was screaming in the trees, and 42 Gravesend Road was lit up with flashes of red and blue, rippling in and out of the night. Four cop cars filled the drive now, and Pip had just seen Detective Richard Hawkins—in the same black coat he’d worn in the press conferences over five years ago—step into the house.
Pip stopped listening to the policewoman taking her statement. She heard her words only as a rockslide of falling syllables, so she concentrated on breathing instead. That’s when they brought Mr. Ward out. Two officers on either side, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was weeping, the red and blue lights mirrored on his wet face. The wounded sounds he made woke some instinctive fear inside her; this was a man who knew his life was finished. Had he really believed the girl in his loft was Andie? Had he clung to that belief this whole time? How? They ducked his head, put him in a car, and took him away. Pip watched until they were swallowed by the tunnel of trees.
As she finished giving her contact number to the officer, she heard a car door slamming behind her.
“Pip!” The wind carried Ravi’s voice to her.
She felt a pull in her chest, and then she was running. She rushed to the top of the driveway and Ravi caught her, his arms tight as they anchored themselves together against the darkness.
“Are you OK?” he said, holding her back to look at her.
“Yes,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” He tapped his chest. “When you didn’t turn up at my house, I looked for you on Find My Friends. Why did you come here alone?” He eyed the police cars and officers behind her.
“I had to,” she said. “I had to ask him why. I didn’t know how much longer you’d have to wait for the truth if I didn’t.”
Her mouth opened once, twice, three times before the words found their way, and then she told Ravi everything. She told him how his brother had died, as they stood under shivering trees, lights undulating all around them. When the tears broke down Ravi’s face, Pip said she was sorry, because that was all there was to say.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said with a half cry. “Nothing could have brought him back. But we have, in a way. Sal was murdered, Sal was innocent, and now everyone will know.”
They turned to watch as Detective Richard Hawkins walked the girl out of the house, a lilac-colored blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“It’s really not her, is it?” Ravi said.
“She looks a lot like her,” said Pip.
The girl’s eyes were wide and spinning as she looked around at everything, relearning what outside was. Hawkins led her to a car and climbed in beside her as two uniformed officers got in the front.
Pip didn’t know how Mr. Ward had possibly come to believe this girl he found on the side of the road was Andie. Was it delusion? Did he need to believe Andie hadn’t died as some kind of atonement for what he did to Sal? Or was it fear that blinded him?
That’s what Ravi thought: that Mr. Ward was terrified Andie Bell was alive and would come back home, and then he’d go down for Sal’s murder. And in that heightened state of fear, all it took was a blond girl who looked similar enough to convince himself he’d found Andie. And he’d locked her up, so he could lock up that terrible fear of being caught right along with her.
Pip nodded, watching the police car drive away. “I think,” she said quietly, “I think she was just a girl with the wrong hair and the wrong face when the wrong man drove past.”
And that other itching question that Pip couldn’t yet give voice to: What had happened to the real Andie Bell after she’d left the Wards’ house that night?
The officer who’d taken her statement approached them with a warm smile. “Do you need someone to take you home?” she asked Pip.
“No, it’s OK,” she said, “I have my car.”
Pip made Ravi get in with her; there was no way she’d let him drive home on his own—he was shaking too hard. And secretly, she didn’t want to be alone.
She turned the key in the ignition, catching sight of her face in the rearview mirror before the lights dimmed. She looked gaunt and gray, her eyes glowing inside sunken shadows. She was tired. So unutterably tired.
“I can finally tell my parents,” Ravi said when they were back on the main road out of New Canaan. “I don’t know how to even start.”
Her headlights lit up the “Welcome to Fairview” sign as they crossed into town. Pip drove down Main Street, heading toward Ravi’s house, and drew to a stop at the central roundabout. There was a car waiting on the other side of the circle, its headlights bright and piercing white.
“Why aren’t they moving? It’s their right of way,” Pip said, staring at the boxy car ahead, lit up with yellow light from the street lamp above.
“Don’t know,” Ravi said. “You just go.”
She did, pulling forward slowly around the curve. The other car had still not moved. As they drew closer and out of the glare of the oncoming headlights, Pip’s foot eased up on the pedal. She looked curiously out of her window.
“Oh shit,” Ravi said.
It was the Bell family.
All three of them. Jason was in the driver seat, his face red and striped with tear trails. It looked like he was shouting, smacking his hand against the steering wheel, his mouth moving with angry words. Dawn Bell was beside him, shrinking away. She was crying too, her body heaving as she tried to breathe, her mouth bared in confused agony.
Their cars drew level, and Pip saw Becca in the back seat on their side. Her face was pale, pushed up against the window. Her lips were parted and her brows furrowed, eyes lost in some other place as she stared blankly ahead.
As they passed, Becca’s eyes snapped into life and landed on Pip. There was a flicker of recognition. And something heavy and urgent, something like dread.
They drove away down the street, and Ravi let out his breath.
“You think they’ve been told?” he said.
“Looks like they just have,” said Pip. “The girl kept saying her name was Andie Bell. Maybe they have to go and formally identify that she isn’t.”
She looked into her rearview mirror and watched as the Bells’ car finally rolled away across the roundabout, toward the snatched promise of a daughter returned.